Youth Athletic and Sports Movement in the USSR on the Eve of the Great Patriotic War (According to the Materials of the Penza Region)

Evgeny Nurdygin

Abstract

The article deals with the development of the youth athletic and sports movement in the Penza region in the first half of 1941 – before the Great Patriotic War. The activities of local Soviet-party and public organizations for the health improvement and military sport training of the population, especially the young: mass ski trips and crosses, gymnastics competitions, athletic crosses (for the Day of the Bolshevik Press, of Komsomol-trade union, for the prize of the "Young Leninist" newspaper, etc.).